A 41-year-old Springfield man pleaded guilty Thursday to beating to death a railroad worker in the victim’s apartment on South Ninth Street in 2010.

Prie Patterson of the 200 block of South 11th Street pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to 31 years in prison by Circuit Judge Pete Cavanagh.

A concerned co-worker found Larry L. Boyer, 58, dead inside his upstairs apartment at 613 1/2 S. Ninth St. on the morning of June 24, 2010.

Boyer hadn’t shown up for work at the Norfolk Southern Railroad in Jacksonville, where he had been employed for 40 years.

Boyer was beaten to death with a two-by-four, which was recovered by police, in a suspected robbery attempt. He suffered significant head injuries.

Boyer lived alone in the apartment.

The co-worker who went to the apartment about 7:30 a.m. found the door had been forced open, and when he went inside, he found Boyer dead on the floor in a pool of blood.

The apartment had been ransacked, and Boyer‘s car was later found abandoned just off Cass Street between 11th and 12th streets.

Assistant state’s attorney Gray Noll said Patterson wasn’t indicted for the crime until December 2011 because authorities were waiting on the results of forensic tests.

Patterson, who was a suspect in the initial investigation, was in prison serving three years on a retail theft charge when he was indicted.

Noll said DNA testing determined that both Boyer’s blood and Patterson’s blood was present on clothing Patterson wore the day of the murder and that was later recovered by police.

He said that when questioned by police, Patterson said he had never met Boyer, and that when he was confronted with the DNA evidence, he had no explanation.

Patterson has an extensive criminal record that includes battery and robbery.

He was arrested within a week of Boyer’s murder after he was accused of throwing a can of chili and a can of soda at a man he suspected of giving Springfield police detectives information about the homicide. The incident occurred June 29, 2010, near Lincoln Library, according to newspaper archives.

Patterson was found not guilty of those charges in a bench trial in November 2010.

Noll said he sought the 31-year sentence because Boyer’s family wanted Patterson to be at least 70 years old when he is released from prison.